“Maybe he likes you.”
“No. He does not. This is some kind of sick game he’s playing for his own amusement. That’s the kind of man he is.”
“No kind of man goes to all that trouble,” her friend said slowly. “Not for a game. He really could simply like you, Alicia. In his own terrifyingly wealthy sort of way, I mean.”
“He doesn’t like me, Rosie,” Alicia retorted, with too much heat, but she couldn’t stop it. “The women he likes come with their own Vogue covers.”
But she could see that Rosie was conjuring up Cinderella stories in her head, like everyone else, as Nikolai had known they would. Alicia felt so furious, so desperate and so trapped, that she shook with it. She felt his manipulation like a touch, like he was sitting right there next to her, that big body of his deceptively lazy, running his amused fingers up and down her spine.
You wish you were anything as uncomplicated as furious, a little voice taunted her, deep inside.
“Maybe you should play along,” Rosie said then, and she grinned wide. “It’s not going to be a drink down at the pub on a date with the likes of him, is it? He’s the sort who has mistresses, not girlfriends. He could fly you to Paris for dinner. He could whisk you off to some private island. Or one of those great hulking yachts they always have.”
“He could ruin my reputation,” Alicia countered, and yet despite herself, wondered what being Nikolai’s mistress would entail—what sort of lover he would be, what kind of sensual demands he would make if he had more than one night to make them. All of that lethal heat and all the time in the world... How could anyone survive it? She shoved the treacherous thoughts aside. “He could make things very difficult for me at work.”
“Only because they’ll all be seething with jealousy,” Rosie said with a dismissive sniff. “And your reputation could use a little ruining.”
Because she couldn’t imagine what it was like to actually be ruined, Alicia knew. To have gone and ruined herself so carelessly, so irrevocably. She couldn’t know what it was like to see that disgust in her own father’s eyes whenever he looked at her. To feel it in her own gut, like a cancer.
Rosie smiled again, wickedly. “And I think Nikolai Korovin sounds like the kind of man who knows his way around a ruining.”
Alicia only stabbed her chicken again. Harder. And then scowled at the television as if she saw anything at all but Nikolai, wherever she looked.
CHAPTER FIVE
ALICIA WAS RUNNING a file up to Charlotte’s office the following week when she finally ran into him, larger than life, sauntering down the stairs in the otherwise-empty stairwell as if he hadn’t a care in the world.
The shock of it—the force and clamor that was Nikolai—hit her as hard as it had at the club. As it had outside the office building that night. Making her feel restless in her own skin. Electric.
Furious, she told herself sternly.
He saw her instantly and smiled, that tug in the corner of his hard mouth that made her insides turn to water no matter how much she wished it didn’t. No matter how much she wanted to be immune to it. To him.
Because whatever she was, whatever this thing was that made her so aware of him, she certainly wasn’t immune.
And Nikolai knew it.
He moved like water, smooth and inexorable. He seemed bigger than he actually was, as if he was so powerful he couldn’t be contained and so expanded to fit—and to effortlessly dominate—any and all available space. Even an ordinary stairwell. Today he wore another absurdly well-fitting suit in his usual black, this one a rapturous love letter to his lean, muscled, dangerous form. He looked sinfully handsome, ruthless and cool, wealthy beyond imagining, and it infuriated her. So deeply it hurt.
Alicia told herself that was all it did.
“This is harassment,” she informed him as she marched up the stairs, her heels clicking hard against each step, her tone as brisk as her spine was straight.
“No,” he said, his gaze on hers. “It isn’t.”
Alicia stopped moving only when she’d reached the step above him, enjoying the fact it put her on eye level with him, for once. Even if those eyes were far too blue, bright and laughing at her, that winter cold moving in her, heating her from within.
She hated him.
God, how she wished she could hate him.
“It most certainly is,” she corrected him with a bit of his own frostiness. “And I hate to break this to you when you’ve gone ahead and made your pretend infatuation so public, but it’s actually quite easy to resist you.”
“Is it?” He shouldn’t sound so amused. So indulgent.
She would have scowled at him, but thought he would read that as weakness. Instead, she tilted up her chin and tried to project the kind of tough, cool competence she wished she felt as she called his bluff to his face.
“I’m not going to take part in your little bit of revenge theater no matter how much time you spend feeding the office gossip mill,” she told him. Tough. Calm. Cool. “If you want to have me fired because you took me home from a club of your own free will, go right ahead.” She let that sit there for a moment, then angled her head ever so slightly closer to his, for emphasis. “I didn’t do anything wrong, I’m not afraid of you and I’d advise you try to communicate with your ex-wife through more traditional channels.”
Nikolai simply...shifted position.
He moved with a primal grace that robbed her of speech, pivoting without seeming to do so much as breathe. All Alicia knew was that she was facing him one moment and the next her back was up against the wall. As if he’d willed her to let him cage her there, his hands flat against the smooth wall on either side of her face.
He hadn’t laid so much as a single finger upon her. He didn’t now. He leaned in.
Much too close, and her body reacted as if he’d plugged her into the nearest socket. The white-hot light of this shocking heat between them pulsed through her, making her gasp. Her body betrayed her in a shivering flush, sensation scraping through her, making her skin pull taut, her breasts feel suddenly full and that wet, hot hunger punch its way into her belly before settling down between her legs. Where it stayed, a wild and greedy need, and all of it his. His.
As if she was, too.
“What the hell are you doing?” But it was no more than a whisper, and it gave her away as surely as that treacherous ache inside of her that Alicia was sure he could sense, somehow.
“I am a man possessed,” Nikolai murmured, his mouth so close to hers she felt the pull of it, the ache, roll through her like a flash of pain, despite the hint of laughter she could hear in his voice. “Infatuated. Just as I promised you.”
“I can see why your brother is the famous actor while you storm about, growling at other rich men and demanding their money.” But her voice was little more than a breath, completely insubstantial, and she had to dig her fingers into the folder she carried to keep from touching that glorious chest that was right there in front of her, taunting her. “Because you’re not terribly convincing, and by the way, I’m fairly certain this counts as stalking.”
“Those are very strong words, Alicia.” He didn’t sound concerned. Nikolai rested his considerable, sleek weight on his hands and surrounded her. Hemmed her in. Let his body remind her of all those things she wanted to forget. Needed to forget. “Harassment. Stalking.”
“Strong, yes.” She could feel her pulse in her throat, a frantic staccato. “And also accurate.”
Alicia felt more than heard his small laugh against the tender skin of her neck, and she knew he saw the goose bumps that prickled there when he lifted that knowing gaze to hers.
“This is the first time I’ve seen you inside this office since you walked into the conference hall.” Nikolai didn’t move back. He gave her no room to breathe. If she tried to twist away, to escape him the way s
he wanted to do, she would have to brush up against him—and she didn’t dare do that. She couldn’t trust herself. Not when he smelled like winter. Not when she had the alarming urge to bury her face in his chest. “I haven’t followed you around making suggestive comments. I extended a single invitation to you, Alicia. I didn’t even do it myself. And you declined it without any repercussions at all.”
“Says the man who has me pinned up against a wall.”
“I’m not touching you,” Nikolai pointed out, that dangerously lazy gleam in his bright gaze. “I’m not restraining you in any way. I could, of course.” That gleam grew hotter, making her toes curl inside her shoes, making that need inside her rage into a wildfire. Making her despair of herself. “All you have to do is ask.”
“I want you to stop this,” she managed to get out, desperate to fight off the maelstrom he’d unleashed in her, the images carnal and tempting that chased through her head and made her much too aware of how weak she was.
How perilously close to compounding the error she’d already made with this man, right here in her office. In the stairwell. Every inch of her the whore her father had called her.
“Which this?” He sounded impossibly male, then. Insufferably smug, as if he knew exactly how close she was to capitulation. “Be specific.”
She shifted then, and it was agonizing. He was right there, and she knew she couldn’t allow herself to touch him, not even by accident—but she was terribly afraid she wasn’t going to be able to help herself. How could she fight herself and him?
“I’d rather be sacked right now than have to put up with this,” she whispered fiercely.
He laughed again then, and she wished that sound didn’t get to her. She wished she could simply ignore it and him along with it. But it made him that much more beautiful, like a perfect sunset over a rugged mountain, and it made something inside of her ignite no matter how much she wished it didn’t.
“You and I both know I could prove you a liar.” He dropped his head slightly, and inhaled, as if pulling the scent of her skin deep into his lungs, and that fire in her began to pulse, greedy and insistent. Her nipples pressed against the soft fabric of her dress, and she was terrified he’d see it. Terrified he’d know. “How long do you think it would take, solnyshka? One second? Two? How long before you wrap yourself around me and beg?”
Of course he knew. Hadn’t that long night with him taught her anything?
Alicia stiffened, panic like a drumbeat inside of her, but it only seemed to make that fire in her burn hotter. Nikolai moved even closer, somehow, though that shouldn’t have been possible, and he was so big, so powerful, that it was as if nothing existed except the breadth of his shoulders. He surrounded her, and there was a part of her way down deep that wasn’t at all conflicted. That simply exulted in it. In him.
But that was the part that had started all this. The part that had looked up into his face in that dark club and surrendered, there and then. She couldn’t succumb to his version of dark magic again. She had too much to lose.
“You don’t understand,” she said hurriedly, almost desperately. “This is—you are—” She pulled in a breath. “I’m afraid—”
But she couldn’t tell Nikolai Korovin the things she feared. She couldn’t say them out loud, and anyway, this was only a bitter little game to him. The ways she hated herself, the ways she’d let herself down, the way she’d destroyed her relationship with her father—he didn’t need to know about any of that.
She couldn’t understand why she had the strange urge to tell him anyway, when she’d never told a soul.
It seemed to take him a very long time to pull his head back far enough to look her in the eyes, to study her too-hot face. Even through her agitation, she could see him grow somber as he watched her. Darker. He pushed back from the wall, letting his hands drop to his sides, and Alicia told herself that was exactly what she’d wanted.
“Good,” he said quietly, an expression she couldn’t read on his hard face. “You should be afraid of me. You should have been afraid that night.”
She scowled at him, not caring anymore what he read into it.
“For God’s sake,” she snapped, not liking that look on his face and not at all sure why it bothered her so much and so deeply. “I’m not afraid of you.”
That sat there between them, telling him things she should have kept to herself, and the expression on his face made her think of that moment in his bed, suddenly. When he’d talked of kitchen knives and sins and she’d kissed his tattoo, as if she could kiss it all away. As if he was wounded.
“I thought you liked the fact that I don’t want you,” she said after a moment, when all he did was stare at her, in a manner she might have called haunted if it was someone other than Nikolai. “Why are you so determined to prove otherwise?”
“You mistake me.” His voice was silky then, but there was a dark kick beneath it, and it shivered over her skin like a caress. “I know you want me. I still want you. I told you this was a distraction.” He stuck his hands in his pockets, shifting back on his heels, and his expression grew cooler. More distant. Assessing her. “It’s your disinterest in having any kind of connection to me, your horror at the very idea, that makes the rest of this possible.”
“And by that do you mean keeping my job?” she asked, ignoring his talk of who wanted who, because she didn’t dare let herself think about it. She couldn’t go there, or who knew what would become of her? “Or the twisted game you feel you need to play with your ex-wife?”
Nikolai only stared back at her, his face a study in ice. Impassive and cool.
“Let me guess,” she said tightly. “You only want what you can’t have.”
“But you don’t qualify, Alicia,” he said, in that dangerously soft way of his that was like a seismic event inside of her, and she had to fight to hide the aftershocks. “I’ve already had you.”
“That was a mistake,” she retorted, and she wanted to play it down. Laugh, smile. But his eyes flashed and she knew she’d sounded too dark. Too close to hurt. “There won’t be a repeat.”
“You don’t want to challenge me to prove you wrong.” His winter eyes probed hers, moved over her face, saw things she didn’t want to share. “Or perhaps you do.”
That last was a low growl. Wolf again, not man, and she wasn’t sure she could survive it without imploding. Without betraying herself all over again, and there was no wild night to lose herself in, not here in this chilly stairwell. No pounding music, no shouting crowd. She felt the danger in him, the profound sensual threat, like heat all around her, seducing her without a single word or touch. She could smell that scent that was only his, the faint smoke and crisp slap of winter. She felt the strength of him, that lethal power, and her fingers ached to explore it again, every last lean muscle, until he groaned beneath her hands.
And she wanted.
Suddenly, and with every last cell in her body, Alicia wanted to be someone else. Someone free of her past, free to throw herself heedlessly into all of this wondrous fire and not care if it swallowed her whole. Someone who could do what she liked with this man without bringing her whole world down around her all over again.
Someone very much like the person she’d seemed to think she was the night she’d met him.
But she couldn’t. And Nikolai still didn’t touch her, which almost made it worse.
“It’s time to move into the public phase of this arrangement,” he told her in that distant way again, as if this was a planned meeting in the stairwell to calmly discuss the calendar of events that would lead to her downfall. “We’ll start with dinner tomorrow night. There are things we need to discuss.”
“What a lovely invitation—”
“It’s not a request.”
She studied him for a moment, all that ice and steel. “I’m otherwise engaged.”
>
“Cancel.”
“And if I refuse?”
Nikolai’s smile turned dangerous. Her stomach contracted hard at the sight, and the ache of it sank low, turning molten and making her despair of herself anew.
It was that easy. She was that easy.
“You can try to run from me if you like.” He looked intrigued at the prospect, and something dark and sensual twisted through her, leaving marks. “But I should give you fair warning—I’ll find you. And you might not like the mood I’m in when I do.”
“Fine,” she made herself say, because she couldn’t think of an alternate plan, certainly not while he stood there in front of her with a look on his face that told her he’d love to spend more time convincing her. She couldn’t have that. And she certainly didn’t want him to pursue her through the streets of London, to run her to ground like some mutinous fox, which she had no doubt he would do.... Did she? “Tomorrow night we’ll suffer through the date from hell. That sounds delightful. Where do you want me to meet you?”
He reached out then and she braced herself, but he only wrapped a sprig of her curls around his finger, gave them a tug that was very nearly gentle, then let his hand drop, an odd cast to his fierce, proud mouth as he did it.
There was no reason at all that should pierce her heart.
“Don’t try to top from the bottom, Alicia,” he said, laughter in his brilliant gaze for a moment before it chilled into something much harder. More ruthless. “I’ll let you know what I want tomorrow. And you’ll do it. Because I really will have you fired if you don’t, and despite this entertaining display of bravado, I think you know it.”
And there it was.
She didn’t want to lose her job—which meant she’d have to figure out how to survive losing her father all over again, once there were pictures to prove once more that she was nothing but a whore. And if there was a tiny spark inside of her, because some foolish part of her wished this wasn’t all a game, that it wasn’t all for show, that she was the kind of person men didn’t use, she did her best to ignore it.
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